


The Happiest Memory

by ruthmakesstuff (orphan_account)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Harrowing, Ostwick Circle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 22:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5843320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ruthmakesstuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tumblr prompt for Kaleb Trevelyan: Describe your character's happiest memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Happiest Memory

If he stopped to think about it, he would probably have been uncomfortable with the fact that his happiest memory was the day of his Harrowing.

Kaleb was only fourteen years old when abominations and demons overtook the Lake Calenhad Circle. He had yet to undergo his Harrowing, along with many of his peers, and from that moment onwards it seemed as if there was a sudden increase in other apprentices failing theirs. Whispered rumours said that if you didn’t pass your Harrowing quickly enough, the Templars would cut you down, and it seemed the grace period had been drastically reduced.

Years passed, and the Templars grew only stricter. Every minor dismeanor could be whipped up into something more sinister, and punishments became increasingly severe. Everybody was constantly tense and alert, as if a moment of inattention during a sermon would invite a Fear demon straight through a window.

Kaleb was beginning to stick out as one of the older mages still marked by apprentice robes. Furtive glances were shot his way, and there was an unspoken divide between himself and his Harrowed friends - “we know something you don’t know”. The others were united by a common experience that he, at that point, did not share, and older mages began treating him with either a condescending kindness or awkward avoidance.

He was nearly twenty when the day finally came, a little over a year before the Kirkwall Rebellion. He didn’t consider the Harrowing itself his happiest memory - he would rather put aside the image of the Fear demon telling him that he had lost, that the Templars had already killed him, that choosing Tranquility would have been the better option (but that, of course, the demon knew a way out for the both of them, if he’d let them).

No, it wasn’t the Harrowing. It was waking up afterwards.

He didn’t know if entering the Fade changed you, or if it was simply a change in perspective, but the world was clearer when he came out. Colours brighter, sensations fuller. He took a deep breath in and he could feel the air filling his lungs, and the relief from tension as he blew it out.

He had the best night’s sleep that night that he ever had in that place, and when he saw his friends in the morning in his new mage robes, it was as if nothing had ever been different between them. Most importantly, he was no longer afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> It makes me really sad that mages don't really get the change to form happy memories outside the Circles - before the Mage-Templar War, of course, but that's not going to be a happy event for anybody, really.
> 
> If you want to send a prompt, or chat, or anything, you can find me on tumblr as kalebtrevelyan!


End file.
